Reading Proust in Berkeley

January 2012

01/03/2012

For anyone who has ever been betrayed by a kindly acquaintance or even a supposed friend, Swan’s rumination after receiving that “anonymous letter” with the poisonous assertions about Odette is instructive. He asks himself:

“What criterion ought one to adopt to judge one’s fellows? After all, there was not a single person he knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action. Must he then cease to see them all?” (SW, 509)

Have we not all experienced this desire to exclude, to cease to see somebody or some group of people, after we have been wounded? Have we not wanted to say, I will have nothing to do with these kind of people ever again!

We talk of how long it takes to get over a slight or a betrayal or a wound. We are inclined to lecture ourselves and others on the importance of forgiveness. But really, how does one “get over it” and continue to move in the company of the suspect or the culprit?

Swan struggles for us. His mind clouds, he wipes his brow, he cleans his glasses and then remembers that he knows of men whom he considers as good as himself (even if they conceivably could be capable of infamy), men who nevertheless frequent the company of his list of suspects. He reasons then, that it must be a "necessity" in human life to frequent the society of people who are perhaps not incapable of such actions.

And with that matter settled, we are told, Swan continues to shake hands with all of the friends whom he had suspected, yet now with the “purely formal reservation that each one of them had possibly sought to drive him to despair” (SW, 510).

Is this the answer then? Must we necessarily resume our friendships? And does this necessity for resuming our social relations then require a new, “formal reservation” when frequenting company?

What exactly does Proust mean by this “formal reservation”? Does he mean that Swann is to be guarded and suspicious, or simply detached? Does a formal reservation mean that we engage with our friends whom we suspect, but give up on trusting them?

01/05/2012

These notes cover Volume One, Swann's Way, to the end of "Swann in Love."

A spirited night. A provocative discussion.

As one member of our group memorably characterized it on her way out the door: "That was spicy!"

The "Swann in Love" chapter elicited a wide variety of responses, as well as some interesting disagreements.

So here we go. I'll do my best to recall the flow of the conversation. As always, please offer any improvements or additions in the comments section below!

1. Léa's "French" Presentation

Léa justified not having read all the way to the end of Swann in Love by insisting that a "French" presentation classically requires two things: 1) knowing very little about the subject upon which you speak, and 2) saying nothing of substance -- but saying it with complete confidence.

After that funny introduction, she then proceeded to play us a CD that she had brought, which contained an excerpt from Swann in Love read by a famous French actor (I have forgotten his name... will someone please add it to the comments below?).

Léa pushed play, and this actor's low, soothing, well-trained voice (no dentalized "t"s! no whistling "s"s!) poured over us like... a rich crème brulee. (Perhaps this is not quite the right image? It was actually very pleasurable.) He read from Proust's description of the first meeting between Odette and Swann.

After about five minutes Léa brought the volume down. Renée disappeared upstairs to explain those rumbling bass tones to our children. And the discussion began in earnest.

Some members of the group commented on how "romantic," even seductive, Proust sounded when read aloud by a professional. Yann observed that those long Proustian sentences, which often frustrate him as he reads, were surprisingly easy to follow in this actor's slow and rhythmic reading.

Léa mentioned that her experience as a reader of In Search of Lost Time makes her feel like a passenger on a train: the car rattles forward for some time, then lurches backwards, then starts forward again. At many points on the trip, as she gazes out the window at the passing scenery, she has no idea where she is going. Nor does she have a picture in her mind of the station that awaits her at the end of the line. Halfway through the Combray chapter, though, Léa said she learned simply to put her faith in the engineer (imagine M. Proust in a blue-and-white striped cap!). She stopped trying to anticipate, and this helped her enjoy herself more.

So Léa urged us to trust the engineer and the tracks. Being a Californian, I urged Yann to try "surfing" the sentences, to think of them as waves, and not to get hung up in the intricacies of their grammar. Marie-José countered, quite rightly however, that the reader of Proust also needs to consider carefully each phrase, each punctuation mark, "to the letter".

I'm afraid our collective advice to Yann may not have been very helpful; it seems each reader needs to find his or her own way. I have no doubt that Yann, with his usual determination, will find his very own Proustian groove in the end.

2. The Question of Swann

From these more technical considerations -- how to approach Proust's sentences, the rhythm of the language -- we moved abruptly on to a more blunt question: What is M. Swann's problem anyway?

Heather was the one who led us there. First she noted that her concerns about the affectation of some of Proust's prose (which, you will recall, she had detected in the Narrator's attachment to his "beloved hawthorns" in the Combray chapter) had returned with a vengeance as she read Swann in Love. To Heather, Swann's anguish, his doubts, his behavior, convey a quality of "preciousness". She characterized this middle-aged man as a privileged "narcissist", living a "purposeless" life.

Renée, back from having tucked the kids in one last time, took issue with the description of Swann as a narcissist. She suggested, to the contrary, that he is merely "lost" or better yet, "stuck". His essay on Vermeer gathers dust; he is tired of the repetitious gatherings and endless status-mongering of his wealthy friends; he is seeking something new and true. (Heather, to her great credit, retracted the term "narcissist" at this point, agreeing that such a term should not be applied too broadly. Self-interested, then?)

Renée elaborated a little more on her very different view of Swann's predicament. To her, Swann's experience of falling for Odette was merely incidental to his prior encounter with art. In Renée's reading, it is of critical importance that Swann encountered that "little phrase" of Vinteuil's, which struck him as "random, fragile, melancholy, incessant, sweet" (SW, 296), before he ever met Odette. He is described as having felt immediately, upon hearing it, "the possibility of a sort of rejuvination" (SW, 296). He becomes obsessed with hearing it again, but cannot find it. So when he hears it a year later at Mme Verdurin's salon, in the company of Odette, a transference occurs, Renée thinks, wherein Swann's aspiration towards a "wholly different life" (contained, mystically for him, in this musical phrase) attaches in his mind to the person of Odette.

Thus Swann, an idle aristocrat no doubt, but an unusually intelligent and sensitive one, finds through Odette a connection to something universal. This is the artist's perspective on Swann's obsession -- that it represents a step towards the light, something almost divine. It is counter to the political perspective on Swann, that he is accustomed to exploiting others by way of his wealth and status, and Odette represents merely another object to make his own.

I spoke up here to say that I agreed with Renée's insight of how significant it is that the "little phrase" came first, and that Swann struck me too as more lost or stuck, rather than someone who is irredeemably selfish and poisoned by privilege. Yet I don't think it ends there, I added. In my reading of this love affair, once Swann attaches his dreams to Odette (I think of Yeats here: "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"), however well-intentioned, he takes a wrong turn.

My sense as I read this chapter was that this opening up that Swann initially experiences -- what Proust calls his "sort of rejuvination" -- quickly closes down when he tries to possess Odette. He follows the fatal impulse to hold time still, to own another person's heart, and this drains out of him the oceanic feeling that first drew him to Odette.

But let's go directly to Proust and see how he sees it. Here is Swann madly trying to track down the "little phrase" (a year before he even meets Odette):

"But now, like a confirmed invalid in whom, all of a sudden, a change of air and surroundings, or a new course of treatment, or sometimes an organic change in himself, spontaneous and unaccountable, seems to have brought about such an improvement in this health that he begins to envisage the possibility, hitherto beyond all hope, of starting to lead belatedly a wholly different life, Swann found in himself, in the memory of the phrase that he had heard, in certain other sonatas which he had made people play to him to see whether he might not perhaps discover his phrase therein, the presence of one of those invisible realities in which he had ceased to believe and to which, as though the music had had upon the moral barrenness from which he was suffering a sort of re-creative influence, he was conscious once again of the desire and almost the strength to consecrate his life" (SW, 290).

He feels the presence of an "invisible reality" to which he may find "the strength to consecrate his life". This sounds promising. Then, a year later, he hears this same music, played on the piano at the Verdurins...

"[N]ow, at last, he could ask the name of his fair unknown (and was told that it was the andante of Vinteuil's sonata for piano and violin); he held it safe, could have it again to himself, at home, as often as he wished, could study its language and acquire its secret" (SW, 299).

Here we are starting to hear the language of possession: to "have it again to himself, at home, as often as he wished..." sounds downright sordid. You want to look away.

Odette, who has made him feel special, who (like the musical phrase) has so often left a smile on his lips after their meetings, becomes more and more someone whom he wants to have again to himself, at home, as often as he wished. Over time, even Vinteuil's sonata takes on a different quality for Swann, not one of liberation but of ritualistic, almost mechanistic identification:

"... the pianist would play to them -- for their two selves -- the little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of their love... but Swann thought he could now discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware how vain, how hollow was the happiness to which it showed the way. In its airy grace there was the sense of something over and done with" (SW, 308).

Now the music and the intimations of love are slipping away, and this development only makes him want to grip both of them more tightly:

"[Now] he contemplated the little phrase less in its own light... than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their young pianist think of Odette at the same time as himself -- which bound her to him by a lasting tie" (SW, 309).

Swann, owning so many material things, wants to own this feeling of opening to the world, like a jewel which a thief might pocket. Not recognizing its "airy grace" for its essential quality, he wants to make his awakening a tangible possession.

3. The Politics Beneath It All

Despite her retraction of the charge of narcissism against Swann, Heather's other condemnations of him still lingered with us. Privileged... Self-interested... A "purposeless life".

A similar tone of disgust crept into Yann and Dirk's following remarks about their general lack of interest in the chapter. Yann said he wondered as he read whether Proust shared his derision at these wealthy, superficial, silly characters, the whole lot of them. He finds himself put off, above all, by their immaturity. When at one point I mentioned with a laugh that perhaps, back in college, we all experienced that sense of triumph after a break up that Swann expresses with the last line of the chapter ("To think that I've wasted years of my life [and she] wasn't even my type!" SW, 543), Yann exclaimed, "Yeah, we all experienced that, and then we turned 19!"

In his view Swann is so far beneath him as not to merit interest. Dirk echoed this, expressing his disappointment over the falling off he felt from the Combray chapter's descriptive beauty -- the sun reflecting off the lake, the white hats like porcelain, etc. To him Swann just needed to "get a job!" Dirk confessed that as he read he felt like writing "WTF" over and over again in the margins, so great was his boredom and dismay.

Wow. I was stunned. My question, addressed to Yann and Dirk: Is it the social milieu of the novel that troubles you so much, or something else? Of course Swann is an aristocrat, living in turn of the century Paris. Of course, as Karl Marx noted in reflecting on the "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!" cry of the French Revolution, certain values are reserved for those who already have their basic needs met. (I would add to the French Republic's tripartite motto, which Marx ascribed to the bourgeosie, the motto of an artistically-inclined aristocrat like Swann: "Aesthetic Detail! Ecstatic Experience! Courtesy!") Resources, however unjustly distributed, provide access to a certain set of values.

Yet these values are accessible, I would argue, to any human being under certain circumstances. In this sense they are universal. Sure, they may be superfluous for many, but they are a part of the human experience, and I believe that they are worthy of reflection.

I came back hard at Yann in particular. Look, I argued, you sound as if you should be writing for Pravda, back in Stalinist Russia in the 1940s. You will go far, comrade! Reviewers back then, party hacks, routinely condemned anything that smacked of aristocratic languor, effete concerns for truth or beauty. Soviet artists should represent the simple, compelling concerns of working men and women: bread, duty, labor. They should prioritize real-world events over the filigreed concerns of the capitalist elite.

If you want art that examines the political and economic substructures of our lives, there are many brilliant options. I think immediately of Bertolt Brecht, for example. Or Goya. One of my favorite contemporary writers is George Saunders. But to dismiss Proust's characters wholesale because they are products of this aristocratic culture -- or to insist that Swann simply needs to "get a job!" -- that seems defensive, or at the very least close-minded, to me.

Yann said it wasn't the social milieu that was the problem. It was the fact that Swann, and Proust's Narrator for that matter, are so caught up in their own thoughts and unstable emotions, that it strikes him as la vie mondiane (do I have that right?), a product of gossipy high society, and a big bore. "What do you want," I asked, growing red in the face, "More action? You should go read a spy thriller!" (Yann, I get worked up. Forgive me my enthusiasms.)

4. Taking Sides Between Swann and Odette

This debate over the intrinsic superficiality of Swann and his set tied to another topic of discussion as well. We all agreed that as readers it is not useful for us to sit in judgment of the characters. As Nabokov so often pointed out to his American readers, there is no need to personally inset yourself into a novel; it exists as a world of its own, a fictional creation in which you are free to explore without judgment. Readers looking for heroes or heroines or, worst of all, "sincerity" drove him crazy.

Sure, Nabokov. Okay. We got you.

Nonetheless, the story of Swann and Odette (not unlike contemporary romantic comedies -- 27 Dressesanyone?) invites taking sides. It is structured somewhat like a match of wits. On one side you have the attractive courtesan, who has been sexually exploited by various men since was a very young girl, who is no doubt suffering from deep trauma (as Heather pointed out), in desperate need of financial resources, at a lowly station in life, a hardened survivor: Odette. On the other side you have the wealthy dilettante, the confirmed bachelor who collects art and drops witticisms at social gatherings, who is adrift and looking for meaning in his life: Swann. The chapter traces the arc of their meeting, their love affair, and its dissolution. Who's to blame? Who won? Who lost? These are unavoidable questions.

In fact, as I pointed out in the meeting, the final interrogation of Odette by Swann, in its brutality, its play-acting, its clash of world views, reminded me of the justly famous, extended interrogation in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. Swann struck me as the member of the secret police, interrogating this parasite of society, this enemy of History with a capital "H", Odette. Yet you could reverse the analogy too. Odette embodies the hard-knuckled forces of power; Swann, the fading ideals of love, consigned to the dustbin. There are, as always in Proust, multiple perspectives available to us.

Heather clearly blamed Swann, this selfish, unthinking cad. She sympathized with Odette. Although I would never raise him up as a paragon of love, I expressed more sympathy for Swann, who after all is hoping that he and Odette share something special and unique between them (even if it is only on his terms), whereas she never even contemplates such a ludicrous notion. Marie-José insisted that Swann's station in life, his aristocratic social class, precluded him from considering marriage with Odette. I argued against this, reminding her that Proust explicitly writes about Swann's rejection of the snobbery of his friends. Jennifer pointed out that there is no doubt of the shame and snobbery directed at Proust and his lowly marriage, when we encounter it in the Combray chapter. To which I replied, yes, no doubt, but Swann pointedly does not share in such snobbery when we meet him with Odette at the Verdurins. His strongest animus is towards the Comte de Forcheville, who is after all an aristocrat like himself.

Odette, we might note, was "impressed by [Swann's] indiffernce to money, by his kindness to everyone, by his courtesy and tact" (SW, 342). Swann, according to Proust,

"had, indeed, one of the advantages which men who have lived and moved in society enjoy over those, however intelligent, who have not, namely that they no longer see it transfigured by the longing or repulsion which it inspires, but regard it as no importance. Their good nature, freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeiming too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of movement of a trained gymnast" (SW, 285).

In the end though, Marie-José and I agreed that, even if not conclusive, Swann surely has a residue of class-consciousness which would make him resist the idea of marrying Odette despite his lack of open snobbery.

Pascale commented, near the end of the meeting, having absorbed the discussion, that she found herself thinking of Swann as one of those people who connect best to art, whether writing, painting, or music, but have a difficult time connecting to real people, flesh and blood human beings. It is true that Proust describes the way the Verdurins "very quickly sensed in [Swann] a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable chamber in which he still professed silently to himself..." But I argued that this is not because of an emotional reserve, a failure to connect to others in general. After all, Proust insists that Swann's behavior is more the result of his "resistance to complete conversion, the like of which they had never come across in anyone before" (SW, 354). M. Verdurin may condemn him as "never definitely fish nor fowl," but

"In reality there was not one of the 'faithful' [of the Verdurins' salon] who was not infinitely more malicious than Swann; but they all took the precaution of tempering their calumnies with obvious pleasantries, with little sparks of emotion and cordiality..." (SW, 377).

5. What Swann in Love is Doing in the Novel as a Whole

Dirk asked the group to comment on what we thought this chapter was doing in the novel. Jeff responded that perhaps it is intended ironically -- a kind of cautionary tale about love. We start with the innocence of Gilberte and her freckled face, and the childlike sense of wonder she evokes for Proust's Narrator. But then we get into middle-school, as it were: with all of the social ups and downs, the exclusivity, the cruelty, the lies, the queen bees and social climbers, that such a setting entails. A number of people in group, including Yann and Nathalie, wondered whether Swann in Love might be a stage along the way in a progression towards an understanding of a deeper love. I was skeptical of this view, simply because I do not recognize a huge gap between the familiar pretensions and masks and machinations of the characters in Swann in Love and adult society. I think we are too quick to push that away as "middle-school stuff". Heather commented on the cynicism of Proust towards his characters, but to me he is accurate, and his descriptions, although harsh, are so compelling that they open my heart towards the people I know in my own life, with all of their quirks and habits. (I have attended holiday parties with a more generous spirit this season, having spent so much in the company of Proust these last weeks.)

6. Last Comments

Feeling terrible for having gotten myself so worked up, having managed to insult my dear friend Yann by calling him a Soviet hack propagandist who should go read spy thrillers, having found myself in a face-off with the intrepid and formidable Marie-José over the question of Swann's snobbery, I came to my senses near the end of the meeting and inquired whether anyone who had not spoken would like to say something. Thank god, because their comments were deeply insightful.

Francoise commented that she had enjoyed Swann in Love very much. She was fascinated by the way that we change according to our social circumstances and the pressures on us. Swann starts in one mode -- as the decorous, generous-minded, tactful aristocrat, without snobbery, attending his friend Odette's literary salon on a whim. And soon he is a possessive, disheveled wreck of a man, paranoid, jealous, suspicious. Odette starts with a coquettish quality, warming Swann to his work, encouraging him, very much in command of herself, and then she grows cold and irritable, disdainful and suddenly lustful. The lack of fixity that Proust recognizes in all of us is frightening:

"For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity" (SW, 529).

Nathalie Valette spoke to the way it struck her that so much of Swann's experience stems from his mind, as if he has not integrated his thoughts into his body. On the phone today she also noted that his sense of being lost, being adrift, might come from his Jewish identity too. He can perhaps never be accepted fully in Parisian society. And to the extent that his family has converted to Christianity this represents a trauma of its own, a denial of his cultural heritage.

Finally, Rachel made the excellent observation that many of the descriptions and passages in Swann in Love are hilarious. Dr. Cottard's attempts at word-play; Mme Verdurin's throwing her jaw out of place by the forced suppression of her fake laughter; Swann's desperate, almost slapstick attempts to find out if Odette has a visitor on the night she does not answer to his knock; his peering at the letter through its envelope. So many of these events and characters are true to life and absurd all at once.

---

Well, we talked about much more of course, but I'll leave it there for now. Thank you all so much for coming, for engaging your minds and opening your hearts, for your willingness to grapple with this, all of us together. Spicy evenings are good. Harmonious evenings are good. Let us continue and have ever more exotically seasoned evenings as we read and meet.

01/06/2012

For the next meeting we will read "Place Names, The Name," the chapter that completes the first volume, Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann).

We will also read part of the first chapter, "Madame Swann at Home," in the next volume, Within a Budding Grove (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs).

Please read up to the line break -- I hope it is easy to find -- which occurs before the following line:

"It was not only in those tea-parties, on account of which I had formerly had the sorrow of seeing Gilberte leave me and go home earlier than usual, that I was henceforth to take part, but the excursions she made with her mother which, by preventing her from coming to the Champs-Elysées, had deprived me of her on those days when I loitered alone upon the lawn in front of the roundabout -- in these also M. and Mme Swann now included me..."

In my Modern Library translation this line break is on p. 134.

Please be so kind as to share the page numbers of the French editions in the comments below.

In the story, Orpheus goes to the Elysian Fields to look for Eurydice. He encounters the Blessed Spirits, then the flute plays his lament -- he does not find her there. He continues on his search, and the Spirits resume their dance without him.

Here is one version:

Thank you, Rebecca! That is gorgeous. (In the Modern Library translation, for those who would like to look up the reference, the Narrator's mention of the "air from Orfeo" is on p. 466.)

Inspired by Rebecca's research, I couldn't help myself and had to look up the "pianoforte intermezzo (Liszt's "Saint Francis preaching to the birds") which had succeeded the flute..." (ML, 466).

Here it is:

After the Liszt, the pianist plays a Chopin Prelude and a Polonaise, which are not specified.

And then, following a break, another set of music begins with the Vinteuil sonata... which is, as we know, thought to be based on Saint-Saëns' violin sonata No. 1 Op. 75. Here is a performance I found which shows the musicians as they play:

In our last meeting, as those who attended will recall, Nathalie D.-S. mentioned that in French there is a certain ambiguity about the title of the chapter that was the subject of our discussion.

Un amour de Swann, Nathalie explained, can either mean "Lovable Swann" or "A love of Swann's". Both meanings work. And considering the complexities of Swann's affair with Odette, both are more suggestive than the unidirectional "Swann in Love."

Jennifer V. has now written to ask another question for our French readers to answer. Her question:

Is the title of this first volume, "Swann's Way", also ambiguous in French? In English we can read Swann's way either as "Swann's path" or... his "way" as in his approach to life. Is the same true in French when you read Du côté de chez Swann? Or is there some other inflection that we are missing in translation?

01/14/2012

Why am I giving Swann such a hard time? Surely, I should be able to take Swann and Proust as men of their time, to take as an interesting historical feature of this novel that Swann and Proust didn’t feel obligated to empathize with common, petty, traumatized Odette -- much as Charlotte Bronte didn’t feel obligated to understand Mr. Rochester’s first wife, the madwoman in the attic, in Jane Eyre. (It would be interesting to write a version of the story from Odette’s point of view, as Jean Rhys did for Bertha Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea.)

Anyway, at first glance, my irritation with Swann seems just an effort to counterbalance that injustice; I’m not signing a decree from the Politboro condemning Swann, Proust, and all the other societal parasites like them. (Whoops). After all, as Tom pointed out, Swann has many redeeming features. He is intelligent and sensitive. The narrator identifies with Swann because he can see in Swann a similar capacity for intense engagement with his own inner experience. Much of our reading to this point is a celebration of the inner life, a treatise on ‘why poetry matters’, and my own life is the richer for it (thank you Alain de Botton, and thank you Tom and Renée!)

On page 424 (in my gray covered Moncrieff translation) Proust reminds us of how much is lost when one neglects an exploration of what lies inside:

"These images, unreal, fixed, always alike, filling all my nights and days, differentiated this period in my life from those which had gone before it (and might easily have been confused with it by an observer who saw things only from without, that is to say, who saw nothing), as in an opera a melodic theme introduces a novel atmosphere which one could never have suspected if one had done no more than read the libretto, still less if one had remained outside the theatre counting only ten minutes as they passed."

But if the world is littered with examples of the harm done by a neglect of the inner life, we do also have to reckon with the outer world, and not just to avoid getting run over by a truck. Both Swann and Tom’s solo traveler in Bali (see Notes on the December 7, 2011 Meeting) share the same problem. He who who makes no deep lasting ties to other people, who pursues experience but makes no effort to write it down or communicate it to others, who feels neither the artist’s nor the worker’s imperative to be productive, is living a life that is missing something important. Swann’s ecstacy from the little phrase isn’t enough to redeem him; we won’t find salvation in mere experience; that can only come once we try to share that experience (did he ever try to help Odette understand why that phrase moved him so much?) We are inherently social creatures, and we cannot avoid this simultaneous need for and responsibility to others. We can only be touched by the sensitive narrator because Proust took the effort to write and publish his big book. Either through our relationships, our work or our art, we connect with people beyond ourselves, and thereby our inner and outer lives matter more deeply.

01/17/2012

Before we leave the "Swann in Love" chapter, I want to share with the group something that moved me and has been in my mind often over the past few weeks.

You may not have noticed it, but when discussing the rapture that Swann felt while listening to Vinteuil's "little phrase" at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's party, the Narrator makes what I suppose may be described as a metaphysical claim: that art is a true solace in the face of death.

To Proust's Narrator, "great artists... do us the service... of showing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in the vast, unfathomed and forbidding night of our soul which we take to be an impenetrable void" (SW, 497).

This verges on cliché (I will admit that I always get uncomfortable with talk of the "soul"). But he continues: these experiences of art, although they "might present a clouded surface to the eye of reason," contain, according to Proust's Narrator, "a content so solid, so consistent, so explicit", that they stand on "equal footing with the ideas of the intellect" (SW, 497).

This leads him to the following statement, which made my eyes tear up when Renée first read it aloud to me:

"Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is inexistent; but, if so, we feel that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, must be nothing either. We shall perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will follow and share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable" (SW, 498).

Note that Proust is not stating that our experiences of beauty will outlive us. That would be the kind of wishful thinking we hear every day. He is saying something altogether more subtle and strange.

His point is that these "phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream," these moments of inner experience, unique as they are to each of us, will precisely not outlive us. Rather than being a depressing thought to Proust's Narrator, however, this leads him to consider them "divine captives" who will accompany us when we leave the world.

This is about the most skeptical, unsentimental claim for something beyond death that I have ever encountered. I cannot refute it, no matter how hard I try. And it gives me a measure of solace I have not had for years.

01/19/2012

Can I just say that a few weeks ago, following one of our meetings... a few homemade madeleines were left at our house. Was it Léa who made those madeleines? Now I'm forgetting.

My point is that the next morning, casually, I grabbed a madeleine from a Tupperware container while holding in my other hand a mug of coffee. Without thinking about it, I dipped the madeleine (fuller-bodied that the store-bought kind, you may recall) into my coffee and took a bite.

I should mention here that I am not a big dipper of things into coffee or tea. I generally don't get it. Cookies or even biscotti just seem to me to get soggy, or worse, leave crumbs floating around.

But this madeleine. It was as if a madeleine is designed perfectly for dipping -- is it? It soaked up the coffee without losing any of its firmness. It added a kind of nutty, vanilla flavor. It was incredible. You have to try it, I'm serious. I am not a foodie at all. I tend to make fun of Renée or friends when they spend too much time talking about tastes. And yet after dipping this homemade madeleine I feel that I understand Proust better.

Léa, if it was you, will you promise to make those madeleines again for us sometime? We can have a tea and coffee and madeleine evening.

01/27/2012

Having now completed "Un amour de Swann", I thought I would add a few of my own reflections to the many and varied comments made by the group.

In the French title of this book, the subject is "un amour" — a "love" or "love interest" — of Swann's. At this point, we know very little about Swann, except that he is a well-to-do gentleman living in Paris at the end of the 19th century.

His "work", though he would not use the term, is that of an art historian specializing in Vermeer (featured in an article in today's New York Times). In his time, with no Internet, no color photographs, no slides, an art historian would need to travel to museums to study the actual paintings. Most of the intellectual work would be carried out during the day for reading and writing are much easier with sunlight than with gaslight.

In the evenings, with no movies or television, Swann and those of his social milieu would go to the theater or to the opera or to a concert or to soirées at various "salons".

Marriages were arranged to further one's social standing and to produce heirs. They were not based on "love" although couples over time might develop a strong bond and an appreciation of one another (cf. Downton Abbey).

For many men, "physical love" even "passion" was to be found outside of marriage with a mistress or a courtesan. And so it is with Swann... and this book describes the evolution of his feelings in his "affair" with Odette.

The over-reaching theme of Proust's work is reflected in the title: A la recherche de temps perdu, that is going back to specific moments in time. How does this happen? What are the keys that unlock the memories buried in our subconscious? In the first book, it is the sense of taste: the narrator is suddenly carried back to Combray when he tastes the madeleine dipped in tea.

In this book, the key is our sense of hearing: a musical motif from a slow lyrical movement of the imaginary Vinteuil sonata takes Swann back to those happy moments of his courtship of Odette. Gradually that motif is implanted in his mind through varied repetitions... at this time of no recordings, one would hear a piece of music only while it was actually being performed. However, most homes had pianos, and educated women could read music and play simplified scores... thus Odette would entertain Swann by playing "their" theme.

It would seem that Proust is exploring a phenomenon that we today recognize and identify as "They are playing our song." Or maybe I am showing my age -- for in the 1950s, with no iPods or personal sound systems, songs were mainly played over the air: on the radio, on a jukebox, or by a live band. Popular songs lasted a few weeks and then were gone. When I now hear The Platters sing "The Great Pretender", I am immediately taken back to a not-so-successful (for me) New Year's Eve party in Denver. And when I hear Perry Como's "Round and Round", I find myself at a college dance hall.

Of course, Proust goes into even deeper analysis of this power of a musical motif. He focuses not on songs, which are easily remembered because of their lyrics and a repetitive melody, but on "classical" music, in this case a sonata for violin and piano. How is it that when one hears such a complex piece, one's mind recalls but a single motif? How often does one need to hear a piece to find that motif? And why, after many hearings, does one focus on that motif and not on others? And why is another listener not immediately struck by that motif? These are all questions that Proust invites us to ponder.